Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/32

 For the decline of literature, there is no more authentic testimony than that of Persius; and yet he seems to be quite unconscious of the true causes of that decline. His first Satire fills an important gap in the history of Roman literature. It contains an elaborate attack upon the poetry and the poetical methods of his own day, whose weaknesses he connects, in true Stoic fashion, not with the loss of public freedom, but with the decay of morality;—Rome has lost, he tells us, all sense of what is good or bad, what is manly or mawkish, in literature; she now loves the turgid and the grandiloquent; dandy poets, after careful preparation, inflame the passions of their audience with poems of a licentious cast. Others, with similar affectations of dress and manner, bring down the applause of the house with sentimental mythological ditties, and in their efforts for smoothness lose all manliness of tone. Many buy the coveted commendation by gifts of dainties or old clothes. Others again affect archaisms, or revel in bombastic mouthings which would make Virgil turn in his grave. No orator can defend a client accused of crime without using all the elaborate figures of rhetoric; all simple writing, all honest criticism have disappeared; "I at least must tell the truth, and I must write down Rome as an ass!" (Sat. i. 121.)

Such is the outspoken verdict of Persius on the poetry and oratory in his day; yet never for a moment does he hint at its true cause; never once xxviii